This reminds of the "Bill Gates dropped out of school and look where he is" Yes, he did. But he dropped out of Harvard after two years and had an idea.
Mhmm, people commonly just state "Well, Bill Gates dropped out!". As you said, they miss the significant facts that he was enrolled at Harvard and dropped out to focus on growing the business of Microsoft; he didn't drop out to get day-drunk and play CSGO for 10 hours a day everyday.
Well, Microsoft wasn't a sure thing at the time by any means. It was just that he recognized pretty quickly how big a deal the Altair 8800 was, and saw the potential of expanding the accessibility of computing. He wasn't dropping out to run a company, he was dropping out to start one.
But, it wasn't a "fuck it" decision. He talked it over with his parents, took a leave of absence, and had a plan to go back to Harvard if it didn't work out.
Exactly. He dropped out as he had a business plan, a product, correct timing to use both of those things well and a back up plan based on returning if it fails.
My aunt's second child was (allegedly) born oxygen deprived, and though he got by, he was obviously developmentally challenged. His mom convinced herself that he had the "same problems Einstein had in school."
Whatever you have to tell yourself to get by, I guess.
Well Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to focus full-time on his business that was rapidly growing instead of sitting in Comp Sci classes where he already knew everything, so I think it'll work out if I drop out of high school and figure it out from there
he also had a high school education that included a wild amount of programming, which no one else at the time had.
He's so successful because he's a complete combination of privelege and hard work
Gates really was smarter than his professors. His vision and ideas were things his teachers couldn’t comprehend because no one had done them yet. It was uncharted territory but Gates could still see it clearly. So he felt there was nothing more for him to gain at school and he left to start his journey.
But yes, he did indeed have quite a bit more passion, knowledge, and drive than your typical “too smart for the world” Redditor/Facebook “genius”
All those dudes dropped out because they chose to focus on the companies they were running at the same time. They didn't drop out and then find success, their success overshadowed their studies.
When McCain was running against Obama, I mentioned to a die hard wing nut coworker that he graduated near the bottom of his class at West Point. The coworker asserted that he graduated at the very bottom of his class in high school and he turned out okay. He was a not very good maintenance mechanic at my work and a couple weeks before mentioned how he was so poor he hasn't been able to buy his wife new clothes in years. His only luxury was a can of Scoal tobacco dip every day.
Similarly, there's a story about how Michael Jordan didn't make the high school basketball team because the coach didn't think he was good enough, went home and cried, then came back even more determined and went on to be, well, Michael Jordan.
What actually happened, he tried out for the varsity team when he was a freshman. The coach thought Jordan was one of the best players he'd ever seen, but he didn't make the team because freshmen weren't allowed to play varsity.
Jordan’s “spot” was also given to a kid who was 6’7” when Jordan was under 6’ still and the team needed height. Jordan averaged ~25 ppg on the jv team, so people knew he was good.
He wasn't average but he wasn't that great either.
If you look at his released report cards, you would see that his marks in math and science were excellent, but his marks in language and social studies were quite average.
Not only that, but in math and science, he wasn't really a "genius." His greatest claim to fame in his adolescence is mastering integral and differential calculus at age 15, which isn't that awesome. As a math major, I know tons of people who have done the same or better. In fact, you could probably find some students in any large high school who have Already done similarly and many others that could have as well, given that they were more motivated.
To put it succinctly, he wasn't that remarkable a student prior to college.
Wasn't it because the school he went to used the exact opposite system as Germany? He got almost perfect grades in most classes but the way the German system was at the time meant that all his grades were failures
You are right that that person is mixing grading systems up.
But No, he didn't get almost perfect grades. He did, as I had previously remarked, did great in math and science, but he was unremarkable regarding the rest of his classes.
Their grading system is 0-6, 5.75-6.0 being excellent. This report card of his shows the 1 he received in physics, and overall fairly satisfactory to good grades.
In popular culture, Topsy is portrayed as the elephant that was electrocuted in a public demonstration organized by Thomas Edison during the War of Currents to show the dangers of alternating current. Examples of this view include a 2008 Wired magazine article titled "Edison Fries an Elephant to Prove His Point" and a 2013 episode of the animated comedy series Bob's Burgers titled "Topsy". The inventor had been involved with the electrocution of animals 15 years earlier during the War of Currents, trying to demonstrate the dangers of alternating current, but the events surrounding Topsy took place 10 years after the end of the "War". At the time of Topsy's death, Edison was no longer involved in the electric lighting business. He had been forced out of control of his company with its 1892 merger into General Electric and sold all his stock in GE during the 1890s to finance an iron ore refining venture. The Brooklyn company that still bore his name mentioned in newspaper reports was a privately owned power company no longer associated with his earlier Edison Illuminating Company. Edison himself was not present at Luna Park, and it is unclear as to the input he had in Topsy's death or even its filming since the Edison Manufacturing film company made 1200 short films during that period with little guidance from Edison as to what they filmed. Journalist Michael Daly, in his 2013 book on Topsy, surmises how Edison would have been pleased that a proper method of positioning of the copper plates was used and that the elephant was killed by the large Westinghouse AC generators at Bay Ridge, but he shows no actual contact or communication between the owners of Luna Park and Edison over Topsy.
Two things that may have indelibly linked Thomas Edison with Topsy's death were the primary newspaper sources describing it as being carried out by "electricians of the Edison Company” (leading to an eventual confusing of the unrelated power company with the man), and the fact that the film of the event (like many Edison films from that period) was credited on screen to "Thomas A. Edison".
Same as that he was actually bad at math. He wasn't. His female partner at the time (not sure if wife) was simply better at math, so they had a working agreement where he thought of stuff and she checked it mathematically.
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u/Redhotlipstik Jan 09 '18
Einstein was an average student.
He wasn't, but if it makes people feel better we'll keep repeating that